The Tandy Arena

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Tandy Arena is the spotlight of the role playing section of the 910CMX forums, previously The Wotch forums. As is implied by the name, forum members create characters--referred to as Avatars, which can range anywhere from Badass Normals to Physical Gods--and duke it out in one-on-one (with the occasional two-on-two) play by post matches. A match starts off with a moderator's post of the battleground, followed by fifteen posts per combatant (for a total of typically thirty posts). Afterwards, the fight is closed by the mod, who then creates a voting thread, in which other members of the forum vote for who they think will win. In exhibition matches, leaving it at that is generally sufficient, but it is strongly encouraged (and in fact required for tournament matches) for voters to explain the reasoning behind their choices. After a week (as of the voting thread's creation), voting is closed and a winner is declared. The match thread is unlocked a final time for the winner to formally end the match.

The City of Tandy located in the mid-western United States and is also a multiversal nexus. People from across the multiverse find themselves drawn to the city of Tandy, and it is currently home to aliens, wizards, gods and super solders. Thankfully, the city is also home to one of the biggest Weirdness Censors in existence.

While fights are a focus, there is also a general roleplay section and a section devoted to roleplaying in Tandy but out of the Arena, including Brawl Street, the sentient city slums where most of Tandy's disorganized fighting occurs, and Downtown Tandy, home to Asagai Boulevard and numerous stores, where Avatars will meet, shop, and generally socialize.

There is also an IRC for the Arena on the sorcery.irc servers called #thewotch. While thewotch is rarely discussed, the name has stuck.

Note when adding examples: Try to limit this page to particularly noteworthy examples of specific tropes or prevalent general tropes.

Tropes used in The Tandy Arena include:
  • Action Girl: Half the cast is this. And the half who isn't can easily be turned into this.
  • Alternate Continuity: There is an IRC for 910CMX in general that functions like this where characters who may not know each other in the arena hang out.
  • Altitis: Themuselessone has this spread over 2 accounts.
  • Anything That Moves: Rette, to the point where she derailed a Tournament fight into a makeout session.
  • Ascended Fangirl: Vikki Pertierra, to Warhammer 40,000, among other things.
  • Author Avatar: Many, MANY characters fall under this, but few are as blatant about it as Über, who is literally his creator dumped into the Arena setting. Or course, it's hard to stay entirely realistic...
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Zemro Shivic, Director of the Arena, and powerful Time Mage.
  • Ax Crazy/Blood Knight: Odds are, if there's not much of an ongoing story arc for an avatar, they're one of these. And sometimes even then.
  • Badass Abnormal: Not all fighters rely entirely on magic. One example is Caleb, who for some time was actually a Badass Normal before ascending to Badass Abnormal.
  • Badass Crew: Whenever a Team Tournament rolls around, these appear enmasse.
  • Badass Cape: Lea's cloak is long, blue, with the symbol of her magical guild on the back. It is also quite thick and has blocked acid, knives and generally been awesome.
  • Badass Family: Azalea, Toana and Rappy form one of these.
  • Badass Longcoat: There are several characters who use longcoats in the Arena; what they have inside said coats weapon-wise is personal preference.
  • Berserk Button: Archanon hates time travel.
    • Rappy hates spirit-sister Azalea and adopted daughter Toana being threatened or endangered.
    • Gaghskull hates everything...or nearly everything, at least.
      • Even Hula-Hoops?
    • Roon does not react well to needless tampering or travel with or between dimensions.
  • Captain Ersatz: Among others, there's Speed Reader, Webby Wonder, and Jullean
  • Cloning Blues: Notably deconstructed and then averted with Rette.
  • Cool Sword: The Nightmare king has Stormreaver. It's a gladius with necrotic lightning.
  • Continuity Lock Out: Want to know anything about these characters without having to read through five-plus years of writing of varying qualities and the other bits of background that does't show up on the forums? Good luck.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome : There are many of these, usually at the end of every fight in the form of the last attack, but a CMoA crossed with a CMoF is the Round 4 thread for the 2nd Team Tourney turning into rapping trash talk.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?? : Given the very broad range of powers, you get fights between people on the extreme ends of the Weight Scale, and since the fights are decided by votes, it is not uncommon to see a Red Shirt knock out a self-described god. For the smarter fighters this tends to be Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?.
  • Elemental Powers: You'd be hard pressed to find a listed element that at least one avatar doesn't hold sway over; special mention, however, goes to Sir Tasnica and Daracaex, who mix and match elemental stones with their weapons and armor, as well as the Soul Power-focused story arc surrounding the former.
  • Ethical Slut: Rette Konn, noteworthy for flirting constantly with opponents and on two occasions actually going further, one such occasion winning her the fight.
  • Evil Twin: Iris Hart to Azalea. The Knife to Roon.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink
  • Finishing Move: The last two posts of every fight are these and they vary wildly depending on the person.
  • Fourth Wall Observer: Author, who is actually capable of reading posts. Uber does the same.
  • Functional Magic: Some characters use this.
  • Gender Bender: Being a branch of what was once The Wotch forums...
  • Genius Loci: The Street.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal / Immortal Life Is Cheap: The Arena Medics can fix just about anything short of actual death, though occasionally a character will decide to keep their scars (or, in one case, decide not to have a limb restored, for tactical reasons). Those few fighters who can bring themselves back from even beyond the threshold the medics can't cross tend to have to do so a lot... in the non-canon IRC channel, this can reach They Killed Kenny proportions.
  • Gravity Master: Lea Plath's default style of magic is creating force from magic, including gravitational force, allowing her to make things lighter or heavier.
  • Instant Runes: Varies depending on the character, though averted with Roon. Rette Konn also averts this with Sigils.
  • Interesting Situation Duel: The fights can happen anywhere, and there is even a thread to suggest locations
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: Everyone in the arena
  • Magic A Is Magic A: Many characters but most notably Roon, which is then subverted when Rette applies some imagination and stretches the rules a bit.
  • Meta Guy: Über and, to a lesser degree, his creation Iggie. It can get on people's nerves at times.
  • Mind Rape: Vikki attacked by a demon in her sleep, Azalea trapped in her own mind, and Roon too many times to count.
  • More Dakka: Where to START. There's even an Ork present.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Azalea, Dodge, Iris Hart, and Lea Plath, with a grand total of 18 arms between them.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Gaghskull Gaghlad Elf-Eater. Read it again. Gaghskull Gaghlad Elf-Eater.
    • The Nightmare King.
  • Nanomachines: Pvt. Jet uses these as his main form of attack and defense.
  • No Fourth Wall: Author and Über both have this as defining characteristics, literally reading the events in the world as they happen.
  • No Kill Like Overkill: Also known as most avatars
  • Older Than They Look/Really Seven Hundred Years Old: What with all the elves, demons, dragons, etc. running around, this is bound to show up.
  • One Steve Limit: Generally played straight, although there are at least three different characters named Iris.
  • Power Creep, Power Seep: As godmoding is against the rules, the more all-powerful avatars (or those accused thereof) tend to hold back in matches (sometimes with little in-character justification). See Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? above.
  • Power Glows
  • Rainbow Hair: One of Azalea's main tropes.
  • Rule of Cool: A wrench wench fighting an evil overlord in a forest of mushrooms? An ork vs a 6 armed mage. Pretty much every fight runs on these.
  • Running Gag: Lots of the oldbies have these. For example, mops, damning certain people and the Crucible.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: You have the characters that have serious plotlines all the time... and then you have examples like The Bearhead who has insane chats with his writer, and Elijah Sight (Knight of Absolute Nonsense) who fights with a rubber chicken. Even more Egregious when characters rapidly switch between the two, such as Rette and Squiggy.
  • Tournament Arc: Initially, the Arena was nothing but tournaments.
  • Troperiffic
  • Wrench Wench: Yutsuko
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Several avatars fall under this trope, notably Azalea, whose hair shifts from blue to purple to pink to red to orange to yellow to white, depending on how long she grows it out.
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